For though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately precede the war, could not from lapse of time be clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as far back as was practicable leads me to trust, all point to the conclusion that there was nothing on a great scale, either in war or in other matters. [2] For instance, it is evident that the country now called Hellas had in ancient times no settled population…
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War
The scientific study of the material remains of past cultures, acquired primarily through excavation of those remains and their physical context, for the purpose of narrating the sequence of events in that culture and explaining those events.